This is a Hubble telescope image of the tattered debris of a star that exploded 3,000 years ago as a supernova. This supernova remnant, called N132D, lies 169,000 light-years from Earth in the satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

A Hubble snapshot of the supernova's inner regions shows the complex collisions that take place as fast-moving material slams into cool, dense interstellar clouds. This level of detail in the expanding filaments could only be seen previously in much closer supernova remnants. Now, Hubble's capabilities extend the detailed study of supernovae to the distance of a neighboring galaxy.